Is the Sky Falling? Do we need a Beta 3? Do I even care?

Why do I complain about the lack of project files in VS 2005?  Do I think the sky is falling and that a Beta 3 is needed?

No, I don't think .NET v2 is going to be a failure, nor do I think there should be a Beta 3.  But the reason I don't think there should be a Beta 3 is because I know how big a deal a beta is and I want v2 as soon as possible and not slowed down -- because I will be gladly using it.

But then why do I make my "negative" posts and complain about VS 2005?  Because the whole point of the open process is to get our feedback, and I'm giving it -- sometimes loudly.  Why?  Because I want the RTM to be as good as it can be, because I don't plan on waiting until a SP.

Will I survive without a project file?  Most assuredly YES.  I can make multiple server forms possible, and make web apps stay alive, and do just about anything I want -- given the time.  And that's the rub -- why should it take lots of my time to do something that is very easy today?

3 Comments

  • I've been on vacation the last few days (and fly back tomororw night), so am just catching up on the whole web project system thread (serves me right for finding an internet cafe to check my email).



    I'm planning on posting a blog post on Monday or Tuesday that goes into the web project system in more detail and why we've made some of the changes we've made.



    One thing I do want to clarrify is that we aren't changing things for the sake of "hobbyist developers". There are *a lot* of new web project system feaures that are specifially designed for enterprise building scenarios: much better scalability in terms of number of pages supported (support apps with 1000s of .aspx pages), patching binary support, much better error detection (much, much deeper and more accurate than VS2003 compilation), richer levels of pre-compilation support (including allowing you to completely remove all run-time compilation -- something not supported by VS2003 and ASP.NET V1.1 today), much richer command-line compilation support with MSBuild integration just to name a few. The web project system is also fully integrated with the new VSTS and Team Foundation features -- so you can now automate nightly builds using the new build server, run automated class unit tests, run automated web UI unit tests, calculate both block and arc code execution coverage of code, and perform performance tests against it.



    The other thing I want to clarrify is that most (if not all) of the "missing features" that have been called out as part of this discussion are now fully supported in post-beta2 builds (note: the Beta2 code-base was frozen in February -- so a lot of time has passed since then). Specifically, some of the ones I've seen called out that I want to clarrify:



    1) Source control checks in \bin directory binaries. This was *never* by design (since it makes source control extremely painful and almost useless), but was a late-regression in the beta2 tree that wasn't caught in time. This has been fixed since then and not be an issue in the final product.



    2) Exclude file support. This was something we origionally thought wasn't needed because of a new feature in web compilation that allows projects to skip and continue over errors. The feedback after beta2 clearly indicated we were wrong so we added it back in. It will be fully supported in the final product.



    3) Solution-to-Solution references and Copy-Local assemblies. This was a missing feature in Beta2 that we've also added and will fully support in the final product.



    4) Assembly created for each page with Publish Web wizard. The web project system supports a granular level of assembly creation. In Beta2 it supported lots of different levels, but the Publish Web wizard was hard-coded to "fixed names" support which generated 1 assembly per page (useful for extreme patching scenarios, but also something that generates a lot of assemblies). This could be overrided using MSBuild, but wasn't very discoverable. The Publish Web Wizard now allows developers to choose the granularity they want in the dialog -- and the default is now 1 assembly per directory (which still provides good granularity -- but a lot fewer assemblies).



    I'll go into more details about the web project system on Monday, but wanted to quickly answer some of the concerns above.



    Thanks,



    Scott



  • Well, they're changing the runtime to include Nullables... thats a pretty big ripple.



    Truth is this is software. Electronic media. Forget the shrink wrap. Let that be a nice thing that people can hold if they so choose when they buy the product.



    Let VS be the program that they have version issues with, and ServicePack VisualStudio2005 a HECK of a lot more than VS2003 (which to this day has NEVER had a SP)



    So I'd say concentrate on working out those Nullable runtime changes.

  • Sure. Fine. Beta 3. Whatever...



    Just release the framework itself (which is rock solid). Too many times people forget that .Net != Visual Studio. I started programming with CLI compilers way back when and can easily do it today. Yeah I like the pretty colors, syntax checking, and whatnot but if it means a delay then it's costing me time and money in developing apps today.

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